“I don’t think I’ll stay here,” Dave Portnoy said. The same corner where he often pours fuel through social media antics, mentioning meme coins.
Speaking on stage with Crypto Exchange Bullish CEO Tom Farley at Consensus 2025, the founder of Barstool Sports stripped off his short, chaotic stint layer at Meme Coin World. With his usual rude candidness, Portnoy described a journey of sudden winds, legal mines, and public repulsion that could be twice thought of even the most reinforced internet provocation.
“I love Rush, I’m a heart gambler,” he admitted. “But the clever part of me, is it worth hatred?” The conversation was part of a broader discussion about Crypto’s culture of speculation and hype, with meme coins – the tokens created more for jokes than utility – capturing the imagination of young risk-hungry traders. Portnoy, who built a barstool in the media empire on viral content and sports gambling, has found himself swayed by the same digital fever.
It started with Safemoon, one of the earliest virus tokens of the Covid era’s crypto boom. Portnoy saw a social media post saying traders made a “9,000,000,000%” profit, bought, laughed at their lack of actual value and were sued anyway.
“They basically said that Safemoon paid me to promote them. TotalLie. It cost $20,000 to get out of the lawsuit,” he said.
Not deterred, he pushed even more. Inspired by the idea of firing Barstool Coin and skipping the hassle of publishing, Portnoy began researching how Meme Coins are made. This led him to a developer who pitched a token called Libra, which was allegedly supported by the Argentine president.
Portnoy bought $4.5 million worth.
“I was on SNL with Lady Gaga. I was just typing. I was, what’s going on here?” he said. The developer had told him that Elon Musk would tweet about it. Instead, the president denied involvement. “I lost all my money.”
Portnoy says he’s lucky – the developer later refunded him completely, but he doesn’t know why. “I’m one of the lucky ones, but you know, I’m not going to get that money back.”
Despite the loss, Portnoy continued to dabble. He launched a coin called greed and greed 2leaning against the satire. Another coin, the prison, was born out of the public’s rage in his meme coin experiment. Someone else created the token, but Portnoy accepted the name and posted about it. At one point, he claims that within an hour the $1,000 investment had swelled to $7 million.
“It took 13 years to make that kind of money with a bar stool,” he said.
But rising almost always crashes. Portnoy says it tracks how many times insiders have been accused of “ragpur,” the term when they throw away coins and leave Latecomers in worthless tokens.
He described meme coins as a rigged game, dominated by a core group of early buyers with bots and algorithms who knew when to exit. “It’s the same group of winners and the same group of losers.”
That perception seems to have changed his appetite. He teased the possibility of the release of Greedy 3, but he admitted that in real life repulsion makes it difficult to make the stomach go. One man confronted him at a Las Vegas casino, claiming he lost $200,000. “It’s all fun and the game behind the computer, but it reinforces people losing and making real money.
Despite the money and memes, he says the meme coin scene is ultimately unsustainable.
“I know why people like it,” he said. “It’s a form of gambling, it’s a Ponzi scheme, and I don’t mean that in a negative way.”
Portnoy does not claim that there is an answer. But if he is a Weatherbane where Memecoin Mania could be headed, the predictions look tough. “I can’t imagine staying here. I think I’ll be here to stay for the next four years. What will happen after that? I don’t know.”
